The Narratives of Muslim Women of Central Asia about "Liberation": the Voice of the Subaltern? (1920s-1930s)

Abstract

This article examines the narratives of Muslim women in Central Asia about their experience of their emancipation. Gender issues occupy an important place in postcolonial studies which have progressed rapidly in recent decades. Can the analytical language and approaches develop within the framework of postcolonial studies be applied to the study of Soviet history? This issue continues to be the subject of discussion among Russian and Western authors. However, it is obvious that when studying some aspects of the life of Soviet society, it is impossible to ignore the experience of studying colonial and postcolonial societies. The author, repeating the question posed by postcolonial researchers about whether the Subaltern can speak, tries to answer it by focusing on the narratives of Muslim women in Central Asia about “liberation”. These narratives were an important part of the Soviet discourse on the emancipation of women. Muslim women's gaining a voice (individual and collective) was seen as an important indicator of the success of policies aimed at "liberating" women. Analysis of Muslim women's narratives about "liberation" provided an opportunity to see the similarity of their structure, as well as how the structure of narratives changed in the 1930s.